


Forever Young

by ToukoTai



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: ...ish, Gen, Ghost Hunting AU, Happy Ending, Major character death - Freeform, bitter sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 11:04:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2545232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToukoTai/pseuds/ToukoTai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Washington was a seventeen year old boy, still, the beanie he always wore pulled down around his ears, with wisps of hair poking out from under the edges. Hooded sweatshirt, baggy on his lanky, still growing frame. He’d be like that forever. He’d never grow older or age, he’d look the same as he did the day he died. Even more then hearing, it hurt to look at the ghost and be reminded of all the things that could have been, that should have been. But weren’t and couldn’t be.</p><p>Crossposted from tumblr</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forever Young

**Author's Note:**

> Title and starting/ending lyrics from the song Forever Young by Youth Group. I highly recommend giving it a listen.

_So many adventures couldn't happen today_   
_So many songs that we forgot to play_   
_So many dreams swinging out of the blue_   
_We let them come true_

 

“You’re going home.” Were the words that greeted Maine when he joined Carolina in the diner. This was not how he wanted to start his day. So he ignores it, ignores her and studies the menu intently. “Maine. Did you hear me?” The deluxe special looked good and, more importantly, cheap. Ghost hunting didn’t exactly pay well. Carolina grew tired of waiting for Maine and just dumped the newspaper she had been reading on his menu. There’s a small article that Maine knows is the one Carolina wants him to see.

Three construction workers had been injured during an accident. By itself not a big deal. But the accident was a freak one, a lighting fixture that had just been replaced the night before had come loose, crashing into the ladder, hard enough to knock the ladder over, but thankfully not landing on any of the worker. Broken arm, concussion and severe bruising were the, thankfully, minor injuries. Once again not too bad, except that the workers were trying to renovate a section of a high school that had been closed off since a fire, decades previous. Maine brushed the newspaper away and glared at Carolina. She stared back coolly.

“He’s escalating, Maine. We can’t afford to ignore him any longer. You can’t afford to.” The high school was Maine’s old high school, the fire had been in his senior year and had claimed only one victim. A David Washington, age seventeen years old, and Maine’s best friend, had been in that wing of school, doing make up work at the time. Due to the suddenness of the flame, arson was suspected but never proven, Wash, as he was known to his friends, had become trapped in the classroom and died in the fire.

The other teachers and students in the area had managed to escape with minor burns. The wing that had been destroyed by the fire, had been closed off, awaiting renovations that nobody had money for or wanted to do.

It was not a time of his life that Maine wanted to revisit in any form. He graduated, left the town for college and never looked back.

And then he had run into Sigma and Gamma, and Carolina and the rest, and the ghostly side of the afterlife crash landed into his normal life. He hadn’t looked back then either. Hadn’t wanted to. Not ever. Except, except he kept getting reports about weird things happening in his old high school. Lights that turned on by themselves late at night. The smell of smoke that never set off the alarms, soot marks on the floor outside of the closed wing, even though the doors were locked tight and undisturbed. Things that could have been written off until suddenly, taken together, they couldn’t.

“Besides.” Carolina slides a folder of clippings over to him. Two teenagers almost five years dead and a string of new mysterious arson’s centered around the house they died in, starting back to the first anniversary of their death. “He’s not the only one we need to look into.” Maine feels almost better about that. That it’s not just Washington they’re going back for. He pushed the menu away and stood up. If he was going back, he was going now or never. Carolina follows him out to the cars where the rest are waiting.

  


“If he’s even here, he’s probably not going to recognize you.” York told him, matter of fact, on the way to the school. “Ten years is a long time.” Maine didn’t dignify that with an answer. Just strode across the lawn and stopped next to the locked door. Just being here, was bringing back memories he didn’t want.

_The sound of footsteps rushing up behind him, bracing for the impact and a smaller body hitting his back. Arms wrapping around his shoulders and legs around his waist. He hooked his own arms under the legs, hefting Washington up higher on his back. Felt the vibrations of the other boy’s laugh against his back. A chin was tucked over his head and Wash’s arms dangled loosely around his neck._

_“I am soooo fucking hungry.” Maine continued his path across the school grounds, humming in agreement. School always left the two of them hungry. “You’re going to the library?” Washington’s voice was incredulous. “On a Friday?” Bordering on scandalized. “Fuck that. We’re going to get some food. Good food. I mean good bad food. Like pizza! You want pizza? I want pizza.” Maine dutifully corrected his course from the library to the pizza shop._

_From then on, Fridays were always pizza days, Tuesdays were burgers at the local diner, Wednesday’s dinner was at Maine’s house and Saturday was at Washington’s._

Maine squeezed his eyes shut and opened them, blinking rapidly, willing the sudden nostalgia away before the intense feelings of loss that came with it showed up. York huffed at Maine’s refusal to answer and set to work on the door, having a certified locksmith came in handy in their line of work. Carolina had wanted to just salt and burn the body right away. But Maine couldn’t do that, wouldn’t allow it, needed to know for sure it was Washington. Carolina had given him the night to get it sorted out and taken CT to deal with the firebugs, as the group had dubbed them. So here York and he were. Breaking into a school building in the middle of the night to track down the spirit of Maine’s decade long dead best friend.

“Well, this is a disappointment.” York said, hands on his hips as he stared up at the light fixture. “You can see right there annnnnd riiiiight…there, it wasn’t attached correctly. Nothing especially spooky about this. Maybe your boy isn’t here after all.” Maine shrugs, still on his guard. He’s almost positive Washington was still here, knew it really. Had known it back when he’d run from this place as fast and as far as he could. Had pushed it as far from his mind as he could when Sigma came calling and he found out how real all those ghost stories were. There’d always been a voice in the back of his head, asking about Washington. If Washington was still _around_.

If there was one kid Maine knew, who wouldn’t have rested easy, it was Washington. Because Washington was stubborn and refused to quit, even when he was down and, supposedly, out. Because Washington had been ready: to leave, to get out into the world, to _live_. And Maine, he wasn’t sure if he could face him. He knew what death did to a person, to someone, what splintered fragments were left behind. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what kind of imprint would his friend, dying young, at the start of his life, dying horribly, in pain, in agony, alone, leave on this world.

The two poked around the school for another two hours, but not so much as a scrap of paper was out of place. Right as he’s about to call it quits, Maine stops in front of a locker on the first floor. It’s a surprise to see it, though it really shouldn’t be. He’d spent so long running from his past, from his memories, that now that he was quite literally surrounded by them, he kept getting tripped up by them. Not quite drowning, but small things, like the number on a locker, would give more then a few seconds’ pause. York doesn’t say anything for a bit, busies himself with swinging the flashlight through a classroom before coming back over.

“I think if your kid was ever here, he’s long gone.” He says, Maine doesn’t make a sound, just stares at the dark and dented grey locker. Number one hundred and seventeen. His locker was the floor above them and a wing over, but Washington let him store his books in his locker because all of Maine’s classes were on this floor.

_“It’ll save valuable time you could be spending finishing your homework this way.”_

Maine shook his head to clear the voice from his thoughts. York was watching him. And then, there it was, right over York’s shoulder on the wall. He’s frozen staring at it, York squints at him, confused, before following the path of his gaze behind him. He whirls around and shines the flashlight on the wall.

“Or maybe he’s not.” York’s voice was a little breathless. “That wasn’t there before.”

There on the wall, about level with an eighteen year old boy’s eyesight, was a perfect hand print, in grey black ash.

Maine couldn’t help placing his hand flat against the wall, next to the print. His hand dwarfed the print. He’d always been bigger then Washington, but now he was realizing how much bigger he was. Because he’s fully grown and Washington is still eighteen.

“Alright, let’s-” York doesn’t get to finish that sentence over the shrill tone of his phone. _Sweet Caroline_ cut through the air and York fumbled to answer.

“Hey this-”

“Drop Maine off with extra ammunition and get your ass to the cemetery.”

 

The house is a rebuilt Victorian, since the first one burned to the ground. Minor repairs in places from subsequent smaller fires. Maine doesn’t even bother trying to be subtle, he kicks in the front door and barrels into the house. If Carolina called, that meant things were urgent.

And they were. There’s smoke coming up from under the door leading to the cellar of the house. Because of course there is.

What follows was probably one of the worst encounters with a pair of poltergeists he’s ever had. Carolina and CT had been almost backed into a corner, and his cavalry charge only granted them a few minutes reprieve. Maine slightly recognizes the ghosts as two kids from the freshman class. Locus and Felix. And they recognized him.

_“I remember you.” Locus said, Maine fought the urge to take a step back. “Yeah,” The ghost drawls. “You were friends with Washington.” Felix’s face splits into a grin as Maine’s hands ball into fists._

_“Oh Washington? That nerd?” Felix laughed. “I didn’t expect him to get caught in the blaze, may have poured too much gasoline. It was one of our first.”_

Maine didn’t know why he hadn’t put it together before. His best friend dies in a fire, suspected to be arson, and two years later, following several smaller fires, two kids die in a fire in the basement of one of their houses. Surrounded by an arsonist’s wet dream. He really had buried his head as far in the sand as it would go. Just as things were about to get really, really messy. (Like: we all might die in the basement together and be stuck with these two for all eternity messy.) Felix started shrieking, and burning, really burning. Like burning up. Pieces of him fluttering away like ash. Locus had time to look extremely confused before he too, burst into flames. In no time at all, both ghosts were gone and all Carolina, CT and him had to contend with was the actual fire the two spirits had left behind. Which doesn’t take long at all. It’d been a damp fall. CT is tipped forward resting her hands on her knees, breathing in large gulps of the night air. Carolina’s cellphone rang( _New York, New York_ ), once they were out of the house.

“Did I get ‘em?” She laughed. Slightly hysterical, with jagged edges of relief.

“Yeah York, you got ‘em.”

 

It was early morning, sky the light grey right before the sun starts rising. The others had gone back to the motel, Carolina giving him a very pointed look when he refused, but Maine had wanted to do this on his own. Needed to do this on his own. In memory of a friend who died too young, it was time to set the ghost to rest.

Maine took a seat in one of the old desks(slightly worried that it wouldn’t hold his weight) and just waited. Locus and Felix were gone, but even prior to their deaths, there’d been activity in the area. The small things, little things, harmless things, that add up. The hand print. The smell of smoke. Locus and Felix were gone. They weren’t coming back. A large measure of closure for Maine, of course, but there was still one more thing to do. It was time to stop running.

Maine took a deep breath, smelled the faint traces of smoke and the more prominent smell of dust. He let the breath out in a sigh, and the tension from the night before went with it. He sat in the dusty classroom, in his old seat and waited. He didn’t wait long.

“You’re older. Bigger. Hell, you’re like a fucking mountain.” The voice came from the desk behind him. It was soft and exactly the same as Maine remembered, with the slight sarcastic edge to it. It hurt to hear, because if Maine closed his eyes, it was like the last ten years never happened and he was waiting for class to start with his best friend chatting at him. “I guess I thought you’d stay the same, even though I knew you wouldn’t.” Maine didn’t turn around, not yet.

Unfinished business. He’d dealt with the ghosts of lives cut short. Sometimes they were angry and sometimes they were sad. Or sad and angry at the same time. Those were probably the worst. They were different in each case, Locus and Felix a prime example. But he knew Washington, and so he knew, on some level why Wash was still here. He was waiting until Maine had been ready to listen.

“I was angry.” Wash said. “Second semester, senior year. My life was just starting and then. It was over.” Maine turns now, half way back, to look at Washington. A familiar twist of his body, that he’d done almost every day of highschool, at least once, to talk to Wash. It felt like something was squeezing his chest. Washington wasn’t looking at him, he was looking at the charred, dusty desktop. “It wasn’t fair and I was so angry. I just couldn’t let go.” Washington was a seventeen year old boy, still, the beanie he always wore pulled down around his ears, with wisps of hair poking out from under the edges. Hooded sweatshirt, baggy on his lanky, still growing frame. He’d be like that forever. He’d never grow older or age, he’d look the same as he did the day he died. Even more then hearing, it hurt to look at the ghost and be reminded of all the things that could have been, that should have been. But weren’t and couldn’t be.

“You left and then everyone left and I…didn’t want to be forgotten, I guess. So, you know, I fucked around a little bit.” He looked up at Maine from under his lashes, smiling sheepishly. It’s a punch to Maine’s gut, to realize how much he had missed this. Missed Washington. A thousand gestures and habits and verbal tics suddenly popping up in his head. Things he had forgotten, things he had decided to never think about again.

“Never hurt anybody though. Not that kind of ghost. Promise.” Maine nods, he knows. He knows Washington, dead, alive, or somewhere in between. This isn’t just an imprint of the dead, acting out the same things over and over, like Felix and Locus, this isn’t a splinter, a fragment of someone once alive, like Sigma. This isn’t like Tex, the warped memory of a dead woman given life by obsession. This is _Washington_ , all of him. Dead of course, but a full ghost. As he was when alive, sitting here, waiting for a decade, just for him.

It’d be enough that even if he could still talk, he wouldn’t be able to. Not that it would have mattered.

“I’m not angry any more.” _Then why are you still here?_ Maine raises his eyebrows in silent question. He never talked much, even when Washington was alive. Sitting and listening to Washington talk made up ninety five percent of his childhood. (he’d give anything for it to make up ninety five percent of his life.) Washington sighs and looks up at him fully. Maine wants to hug him, wants to wrap his arms around the boy’s smaller shoulders and never let go. But he knows if he tried his arms would just go through thin air. Washington is dead, died a long time ago, and there’s nothing he can do about that. “Guess I just wanted to say goodbye. Never really got the chance.”

But there is something he can do about _this_. He stands up, a scrape of the chair on the floor, he really does tower over Washington, but the ghost keeps looking up at him. He can’t stand the thought of Washington really leaving, moving on or whatever, he can’t stand the thought of him staying here, in the burnt out classroom, with the last moments of his life etched in the floor and walls any longer either. Maine has always been selfish. (Very selectively it’s true, but still.)

Washington has always been the best at reading him. Maine never talked much, doesn’t talk at all now. All he’s got are a handful of signs and body language and he was never big on expressing himself. People don’t always get what he means. Carolina is good at it, York is decent, CT ties with Carolina, but no one, _no one_ , comes anywhere near Washington at understanding him.

So when he holds out his hand, Washington knows exactly what he means. The ghost flickers, like a blink and then a slow smirk spreads across Washington’s face. He doesn’t have to ask if Maine means it, if Maine knows what he’s asking, because just as Maine knows Washington, Washington knows _Maine_. Even if years upon years have passed since they last saw each other. Even if one is frozen in time forever, while the other moves forward. Washington knows Maine. And he knows Maine wouldn’t ask, wouldn’t offer, if he didn’t mean it.

It’s cold at first, when Washington takes his hand, it’s a sudden bite of cold that spreads up from his hand to his shoulder to his neck to the base of his spine. It settles behind his eyes, leaks backward over the rest of his head and seeps into the crevices of his brain. It’s different from Sigma, so very, very different. Sigma _burned_. Burned his way into Maine, burned pathways through his mind, burned through his soul, burned out his vocal chords, burned until Maine couldn’t even register the pain and sometimes, it feels like he’s burning still. (even though Sigma’s long gone and never coming back)

Washington is not Sigma. He isn’t here to take control, he’s not here to force and twist his way in, he’s not trying to claw back a semblance of life in whatever way he can. Washington is here because Maine invited him in. (and Washington is whole, takes nothing, wants nothing.) Washington is cold, but not the deep biting freeze of the arctic, of winter(of death). But the feeling of a cool compress on a burn, a sudden breeze on a humid day, sticking your toes in a stream during the hot summer months. It’s pleasant, it’s a relief.

Maine opens his eyes with a sigh. He can feel Washington behind them, looking out with him. The difference between a forced possession and an invitation is massive. He didn’t realize how torn up Sigma had left him, until Washington flowed through him. He can tell Wash is holding himself back from asking about it. He appreciates that. Wash knows how much and hard and when to push Maine and now isn’t the time.

_Holy shit, I am a short kid. Hey, do you think I would have been as tall as you?_

Washington’s voice filters through his mind. Maine snorts and shakes his head. Highly unlikely. Washington would have been tall, looking at his father and his own stuck in growth spurt spirit, but not as tall as Maine. With a start, he realizes that it doesn’t hurt to think about Washington, which he was expecting honestly, but it also doesn’t hurt to think about what would have been. Which he hadn’t been expecting. Maybe this is what moving on means?

Maine starts walking, what else is there to do? He wants out of the school, out of the past burned down around them. He plans to carry Washington for as long as Washington wants to stay. He wants to show him the world, everything he missed while he was stuck here.

Starting with the motel the others are camped at. Gotta start somewhere, he thinks to himself and pointedly doesn’t think about their reactions to him being possessed. Again.

_This happen a lot?_

Of course Washington would pick up on that. Maine shrugs, it happens enough. First time he’s offered though.

 _Not any more_. Wash says, thinks, whatever, with such firm confidence that Maine believes him. Washington is taking up all the space he can, practically sprawling out and Maine knows he won’t be letting go, won’t release an inch to anyone or anything else, unless Maine asks him to. His own private mental and anti-possession insurance.

_Gotta pay for my rent **somehow**_

Maine ignores that, keeps walking. And then he’s pushing open the door and walking outside. It’s no longer pre-dawn, it’s no longer even dawn, it’s full on mid morning sun beating down on the parking lot in front of him. The possession took a hell of a lot longer then Maine thought it would.

 _Well yeah_ , Washington replies, the edge of sarcasm back in his voice, _I did it right_. Maine doesn’t ask how you can do it wrong, he knows first hand.

There’s a happy sigh from Washington as Maine steps out from under the shadow of the building and into the sun. And he has to stand there, head tilted up and eyes closed. As long as he can, because this is the first time Washington has felt the sun, unfiltered through windows, in ten years. He feels Washington stretch under his skin, rippling through his blood vessels and tugging at his nerves. Moving up his body to the top, the closest he can get to the sunlight. Maine imagines him standing on his tiptoes, arms reaching up, hoodie sleeves slipping down to his elbows and fingers splayed wide, getting as much warmth on himself as possible. He hears Washington’s hum of contentment in his bones.

Maine decides he’s going to be spending a lot more time out in the sun from now on.

 

He wonders why Washington didn’t leave. He’s perfectly capable of walking around on his own. Maine’s fairly certain he wanders around at night, when Maine’s asleep. So what kept him confined to the school for such a long time?

_Was afraid I’d miss you, when you came back. Duh._

Sometimes the depth of Washington’s devotion staggers Maine.

 

“Goddamnit Maine, really?” Carolina snarls, gripping Maine’s head, and staring hard into his eyes.(eyes are windows to the soul after all) It’s months after the school and he’s sitting on the edge of a bed in a bed and breakfast located in, ironically, the state of Maine.(York had a field day with that. So had Washington, though only Maine had been privy to it.) The twins had headed off for warmer climates and it was just him, Carolina, York and CT on this job.

It’s the aftermath of a poltergeist utterly failing to possess him and Carolina really did have to ask why. And Maine hadn’t lied. Really couldn’t.

It was an impressive amount of spiritual fireworks, as the poltergeist tried to push its way in and basically got the shit beat out of it when Washington not only closed the gates, so to speak, but also manned the battlements with archers and boiling oil, to stretch a metaphor. All the lightbulbs had popped in the entire house, at once, in showers of sparks and glass. A main fuse had also blown and the tv screen had a long crack running through it by the time Wash was done.

The poltergeist hadn’t lasted much longer after that and surprisingly enough, Maine hadn’t felt anything except a slight sense of disconnect during the attack. Washington is still a ball of angry, indignant energy in the back of his skull though, Maine’s neck and head pleasantly numb with it and it will take several minutes in the nearest pound, petting cats, before he’s calmed down again.

Maine’s found that he can’t really help stopping to pet every cat that he can. Washington had always had a particular fondness for the animal and the surge of happy and tranquil emotions Maine gets from his passenger every time he runs his hand over soft fur never gets old.

“How long?” CT asks. And Maine knows her well enough to read between the lines: _how long have you not been you and I haven’t noticed?_ Maine shrugs.

 _It’s not like that_ _._ He types out on his phone.

This possession is not like the others. It’s not a matter of stealing or even borrowing. Washington doesn’t try to take control, (Maine would let him every time anyway) he’s content to take the passenger seat and just observe.

(Maine didn’t realize how much he missed having Washington’s smartass commentary until there was a running stream of it again.)

York’s eyes narrow, even as Carolina peels Maine’s eyelid back and shines her penlight into his eyes. Maine wonders idly if she would be able to see Washington looking back. But Washington is still crowded at the back of his head, grumbling to himself, not even bothering to look through his eyes. A small blessing really, it means Washington isn’t paying attention to what’s going on around him.

“It’s Washington isn’t it?” York asks, Maine frees his head from Carolina’s grip enough to nod. Carolina re-grips his jaw and turns his head up to face her.

“I thought you said you took care of him?” Her voice has the very edge of anger in it. Without breaking eye contact he types out a short response, one handed.

_I did._

“I don’t call this ‘taken care of’, Maine.” Oh yeah, she’s angry, but Maine can be as stubborn as her when he wants to, and he wants to.

_I do_

Carolina’s lips thin and press together so hard they turn white. Maine doesn’t back down, won’t back down, can’t back down. Not when it’s Washington on the line. He gets a ping of awareness in the feeling of a wave of cool washing over his head and damn, is this a bad time for Washington to come out of whatever power sulk he had going on.

_What’s up? What’d I miss?_

Maine doesn’t answer, he doesn’t have to. Even stuck at eighteen, Washington is a smart kid and can put two and two together to make four on any day of the week.

_Oh hell no_

Maine panics slightly as Washington’s cool, tingling presence melts out of his body. He jerks out of Carolina’s grasp and flails a little. Trying, stupidly enough, to grab Washington. And then he doesn’t need to, because Washington’s semi-transparent outline is sitting next to him on the shitty hotel comforter. Maine catches hold of himself and clenches his hands in the scratchy fabric, he knows the others don’t miss, that when Washington slides a hand over and through the hand nearest him, Maine unfists his.

“Hi. I’m Washington. Well, actually David, but I like Washington better.” Carolina doesn’t look any happier.

“You’re dead.” York winced at Carolina’s tone. “You’re dead and you’re _possessing_ Maine.” Maine feels a little warm at how protective and upset Carolina sounds. Even if she has this backwards.

“Well yes.” Washington says and then yelps and scoots back on the bed as Carolina lunges. It’s eerie how much Washington forgets that he’s dead and that the things that hurt the living no longer apply to him. “In my defense, he asked!” He says in a rush, backed up against the headboard. Carolina’s head swings toward Maine.

“You _asked_?” The disbelief packed in that statement is staggering, it’s not coming from Carolina but from CT. “You.” She points at Maine from across the room, her eyes wide. “You, who had to survive Sigma and becoming the Meta, _you, you asked another spirit to possess you?_ ” Maine just shrugs, he’s not giving ground on this. There’s a world, a whole universe of difference between asking Washington and what happened with Sigma. Washington gets over his temporary fear of Carolina enough to reclaim his place next to Maine. Maine tapped out a response on his phone.

_He’s my friend_

“He’s _dead_ , Maine.” Carolina grounds out from between clenched teeth. “You, of all people, know firsthand what happens when you don’t let go.” Maine does, he still carries the scars, mental and physical. He doesn’t blame Carolina for her reaction.(It’s part of the reason he didn’t tell her sooner.) This has all the hallmarks of her own family tragedy. Of which Maine was an involuntary participant. But his situation is both different and the same. Yes, he hasn’t ever learned to let go of Washington, not properly. But by the same token, Washington hadn’t yet learned to let go of him. And that’s where the difference is. Maine wasn’t forcing Washington to stay and Washington wasn’t forcing Maine to keep him. It was a mutual decision.

“Don’t I get a say in this?”

“No!” Carolina snaps, and Washington shies back. Maine holds the phone out again, wiggles it a little insistently.

_He’s my friend._

“ _Maine_.” Carolina rubs the spot right between her eyes. She’s annoyed and upset and irritated. So is CT, she’s sitting hunched down, her hands dangling near the top of her socks where her throwing knives are located. York is the only one not quite gearing up for a fight. In fact, he’s eying Washington like the ghost is a lock. A puzzle. And he’s almost got the answer.

“So the reason you’ve been way on point, like scarily on point lately,” York begins. “Is because of Washington, right?” Maine nods. That’s true. Washington is a ghost and he knows when there are other ghosts, (half formed, fragments, imprints or full like himself) lingering around. And Maine has never missed a cue Wash has given him.

“Like knows like.” Wash says with a twisted half smile. Even if he forgets about bodily harm, Wash knows he’s dead. It’ll take a lot more then a few months on the road to out learn a lifetime of habits. Now CT sits back up with a considering look on her face.

“What did you do, with the poltergeist?” Wash’s outline fizzles a few times and then solidifies. Maine knows it’s the ghost form of blinking.

“It wanted in and I wasn’t going to let the little fucker do that.” Washington’s face sets in just the way that Maine remembers means he’s going to be incredibly stubborn. “End of story.”

“You can do that?” CT asks. “You can stop other _things_ from getting into Maine?” Wash rolls his eyes and Maine feels the tension slip out of him. If Washington is relaxed enough to bait CT, then half this battle is over.

“Uh, yeah. Home court advantage, I have _permission_.” And that’s the difference right there. Out in the open where everyone can see it.

“Could you do that with anyone?” Wash fizzles again. “Stop them from being possessed?”

“I’d have to already be possessing them and they’d had to agree to it. But, yeah, I could.” CT and York share a look. Carolina still isn’t happy.

“Carolina…” York begins.

“Save it.” She cuts him off. “I’m not happy about this, Maine.” She doesn’t look at Washington, her eyes are fixed solely on Maine. “You should have told us earlier.”

_Was worried_

He typed out.

_Don’t want him gone._

Carolina’s face softened. Just the tiniest fraction. But still. Maine wasn’t sure if that meant he’d won or not, he refused to think of himself as losing. Not now.

“And you?” It took him a few seconds to work out that Carolina hadn’t addressed that question to him. She was talking to Washington. The ghost shrugged his shoulders even as his outline melted and faded a bit.

“I don’t really want to be gone either.” He poked the tips of his fingers together, a nervous habit he had in life and Maine was comforted in a weird way to see it had carried over into his death as well. “But if Maine wanted me to be, I would.” Maine can see how that affects Carolina, her head tilts just to the side, lightly. Her frown lessens, creases on her forehead lighten and her eyes relax. Maine pays attention these things, to facial expressions and body language. And right now everything about Carolina is telling him they’re almost in the clear.

“You’d leave?” She was still staring at Washington intently. “If Maine asked, if Maine told you to leave, to go, you would? No hesitation?” Wash solidified from the hazy murk he had been, to sharply in focus so suddenly, Maine was surprised he didn’t hear a snap.

“Yes!” He replied fiercely. “If Maine didn’t want me here, I would leave. I stayed because I wanted to say goodbye and I’m staying until he says it back.” Carolina nods, it’s a sharp nod, a nod of decision.

“Then here’s how this plays out. I won’t make a move, but the _minute_ you step out of line. I’m exorcising you so fast you won’t even have time to blink before your ass is in the hereafter. Clear?” Washington mock salutes.

“Crystal.” Maine holds his hand out, palm up, to Washington. Deciding now that they have Carolina’s compliance, not to push the boundaries. “Uh, this could a few hours.” Washington says, looking down at Maine’s hand and back up to Carolina. “Hope you don’t have anywhere to be.” York looked confused, CT hid it better of course. Carolina just sat back, a set expression to her face.

“Take your time.” She said, a bit of an edge to her voice.

 _He will_ Maine typed, just as Washington snagged his hand, and melted into him. The cool, numbing sensation that Maine knew as Washington, spread up his arm.

 

And the next time he opened his eyes, he was flat on his back on the bed, Washington a slight weight in his head as he sat up. Maine relaxed, letting out a sigh, inside Washington thrummed in contentment.

“He always take that long?” Were the words that greeted him. Carolina was sitting on the twin next to his bed, sharpening a knife. She flicked her gaze up to Maine, so he nodded. She grunted and dropped her head back to the knife. “I’m still not happy with this set up, Maine.” Maine shrugged and patted around on the bedspread until he found his phone. “Is _he_ listening in?” He nudged at Washington just to check and received a quiet murmur for his troubles, so Maine shook his head.

Washington was, for lack of a better word, sleeping. Between the poltergeist, the showdown with Carolina and re-possessing Maine, he probably wouldn’t be in any shape to do really anything for the next eight or so hours. Carolina draws his attention back with an irritated sigh.

“I meant what I said. If he steps so much as a toe out of line, I will end him. Permanently.”

_He won’t_

“How can you know that? Death changes a person, Maine.” Carolina said, her eyes back on the knife, she twists the handle this way and that, watching the play of light on the blade. And this was true. There were dimensions to Washington that hadn’t existed before. But dying did that to you. And in all the ways that mattered and many of the ways that didn’t, he was the exact same as before.

 _It hasn’t changed him that much_.  Carolina growls, green eyes sharp and hard, knife forgotten in her hand as she focused on Maine.

“The only reason why I’m allowing this is because, for all that I regret saying it out loud, York is right.” Maine inclined his head, Carolina sighed, running a hand through her ponytail. “You’ve been better. Not just at the job, but all around. And it’s because of…your friend.” Maine understood Carolina’s reservations, could understand why she couldn’t quite say Washington’s name. He met Carolina through the burn of Sigma, she didn’t know him from before, she didn’t know how damaged Sigma had left him. But now she was getting the idea, because Washington was patching him slowly back together. Washington seeped into the cracks Sigma left behind, his cold, numbing presence soothing the parts of Maine rubbed raw.

He felt calmer, more in control of himself. He didn’t need to second or third guess his own thoughts. Maine was grounded in a way he hadn’t been in years. (Since Washington died, really.) He trusted Washington, above all else, above Carolina, above himself. Washington _knew_ him. Knew Maine from before, before Sigma, before college, before he died. Washington knew how he was supposed to be. How he acted before life happened.

Maine was aware that relying so completely on someone else, and a ghost at that, to fix himself was probably unhealthy on some level. But he didn’t care. Like York pointed out, like Carolina said, he was better. It was working. And that wasn’t the only reason he trusted Washington.

Maine felt the wounds he carried from Sigma, reflected on Washington. Sometimes at night, when Washington wandered, he didn’t watch his appearance as closely as during the day. And sometimes at night Maine would wake up, to Washington just getting back. He never let Washington know he was awake, he’d watch from under partly closed eyes at the specter of charcoal bones, raw, exposed muscle and sinew. A skull with most of the skin missing and all of the hair, one eye burned out of the socket, teeth grinning through the absence of skin and cheek, lips gone, nose a hole in the face. Those nights Maine watched him as he sat slowly, achingly, on the edge of the bed, hunched over, until some internal alarm chimed and a skeletal hand, with tendons still working in places, reached out to touch him and Maine lost time as Washington took repossession. Even if Washington wasn’t his dead best friend since childhood, Maine would trust, would take his word, over any and everyone else.

Where Maine had burned on the inside and had no visible marks to show for it, Washington had burned on the outside and he carried his death marks on his ghost. (When he didn’t think to hide them.) A perfectly matched pair as far as Maine was concerned. Washington knew what it felt like, to be in the center of an inferno and burn.

(There were times during the Sigma/Meta fiasco where Maine wondered, from the back of his mind, if this was what Washington felt right before he died.)

“I’ll be watching him, and you.” Carolina continued, back in the present. “If anything happens, Maine, and I mean _anything_. I will pull his plug.” Maine nodded. He understood Carolina’s reservations, her concerns, but she didn’t understand, didn’t have the full story. And Maine didn’t want to give it to her. This was something all his, all Washington’s. But he could appreciate Carolina’s watchfulness.

Now though, there are other concerns. Washington is hazily spread out in his mind. Still keyed up, but with no actual energy to do anything about it. He’s anxious and still upset over the poltergeist and the confrontation with Maine’s ghost hunting buddies hasn’t calmed him down in the least. If he was alive, he’d be tossing and turning in his sleep or jittery and pacing.

“Where are you going?” It’s not quite the sharp demand of an angry Carolina, but it’s close. Maine pauses for a moment in yanking on his boots to tap the buttons on his phone.

 _Going to the pound_. She raises one red eyebrow at him.

“Why?”

 _Quiet time_ _._

She doesn’t say anything else, but she follows him, even drives him, doesn’t ask any questions when he gives her the directions. He’d looked them up before hand, as he does every new town or city they come to. It’s a very understaffed pound, and the attendant on duty is fresh out of highschool and doesn’t think twice about letting Carolina and him in to look at the cats once a few jacksons have changed hands.

Maine feels the second Washington realizes where they are. It’s the same second that he holds out his hand and gets a tiny black nose to bump against his fingers. Washington is awake and crowding behind his eyes and under fingers in seconds. Maine doesn’t try to stop the small smile on his face as he feels Washington’s eagerness.

He scoops the tiny furry body up in his large hand and deposits it in his lap, other hand already stroking the grey striped fur. He lucked out with this pound, a pair of abandoned kittens had come in recently and the aide let them out for him. Carolina leans against the wall of the room, watching him, but Maine could care less. He feels small needle claws in his jeans as the other kitten attacks his knee, and then more enthusiastically his hand when he presents it, but feels more keenly Washington’s laugh in his bones. The kitten in his lap starts purring, its whole small body vibrating under Maine’s hand, the one attached to his hand by its teeth doesn’t have the bite force to draw blood. And under his skin Washington settles back, content to pet kittens by Maine proxy. And Maine just sits back and does that. Gets lost in the motions of his hands and the feel of soft fur and the happy, calm waves of feeling he gets from Washington.

He could spend the rest of his life here, and he focuses some actual thought into the logistics of getting a cat but with his lifestyle that’s not really an option. Still, the few short hours he manages to snag this time, makes it far worthwhile. He knows that Carolina wants to ask, is juuuust barely holding her tongue, but she doesn’t. She stays silent, gets in the driver seat. And Maine is thankful for that as he sinks down into the passenger seat. He’s…content right now, peaceful, reveling in the quiet, not quiet, of sharing a body with a displaced spirit.

The sunlight through the window is warm on his face, he leans back and lets his head fully rest against the seat. Closes his eyes with a sigh and listens to the happy, relaxed humming of Washington in his bones.

Today will be a good day.

 

_Let us die young or let us live forever_   
_We don't have the power, but we never say never_   
_Sitting in a sand-pit, life is a short trip_   
_The music's for the sad men._

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween


End file.
